Movies.

An `Affair' To Forget

Star Power And High-tech Thrills Overwhelm The Update Of `The Thomas Crown Affair'

August 06, 1999|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune Movie Critic.

`The Thomas Crown Affair" is the kind of movie that, if it were working right, should have oozed style, sex, excitement and glamor. But, for my money, it only manages to waste some money and break out into a fine sweat. A remake of the 1968 Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway hit, this pricey-dicey romantic thriller about sudden love between a rich and elegant thief and a fetching, hard-nosed lady cop is too expensive for its own good, too chic for comfort. Some audiences will enjoy it, but probably not as much as they'd enjoy the original, undiluted.

Like its source, this new "Crown" starts out as a heist thriller, then switches to a mix of detective story and erotic cat-and-mouse game. Eventually, it becomes a battle of the sexy: a tiff waged between the fabulously wealthy corporate and criminal mastermind, Crown (here played by Bondsman Pierce Brosnan) and an intrepid, principled lady shamus who's hot on his trail (Rene Russo).

Director John McTiernan ("Die Hard," "Die Hard With a Vengeance") and his crew keep trying to dazzle us with the high-tech thriller elements and thrill and titillate us with the steamy lovemaking between Brosnan and Russo. Yet at its worst, the new "Thomas Crown" is just another bloated, pumped-up throwback. Remade with lots of pizazz but little wit or soul, it's a movie that tries to translate a zingy '60s sensibility to the '90s and pretty much flops.

The reasons are obvious. Pierce Brosnan is no Steve McQueen. Rene Russo is no Faye Dunaway (though Russo was quite good and though I was also happy to see the real Faye popping up with a classy little cameo as Crown's gorgeous shrink). There's more: John Wright can't edit like Hal Ashby. Bill Conti can't pen a tune like Michel Legrand. (Legrand's main title song, the pop baroque "Windmills of Your Mind," won the '68 Oscar.) And cinematographer Tom Priestley, despite improved equipment, can't light up a picture like the great Haskell Wexler -- whose multi-camera virtuosity on the original "Crown" was underappreciated at the time.

Last and most crucial, McTiernan can't handle stylish claptrap with half the panache and expertise of Norman Jewison ("In the Heat of the Night," "Fiddler on the Roof") -- though having that sentiment would have surprised me in 1968, when I saw the original movie. Back then, despite being a hard-core McQueen fan and a devotee of "Bonnie and Clyde," I was disappointed by "Thomas Crown." I found it stylish but empty, and I blamed Jewison, who seemed to me a prototypical new-style Hollywood hack, all flash and no fire.

Today, by comparison, Jewison looks like an expert genre-mixer and consummate stylist and McTiernan looks like a camera acrobat in search of a script. Even the robbery in this new film -- a highlight of the first movie, because of the split-screen devices used by Jewison and Wexler -- is exciting but absurd. If you rent the original "Thomas Crown" on video (and you should), you'll find that it's held up amazingly, that it's more coherent and glamorous -- and much more fun -- than this new one. If the Brosnan-Russo-McTiernan version looks half as good in three decades, I'd be surprised.

Not that it should have to, of course. Audiences looking for a good time on a weekend night will have part of one here -- especially during the opening art museum heist, which is so complex and over-the-top, it becomes funny. And they'll get tease and heat from the sex scenes and a roller-coaster thrill or two from McTiernan's hyperactive camera, which keeps sliding along the action like a pickpocket looking for victims. They can also relish Denis Leary's bemused performance as tough cop McCann. (Playing the equivalent to Paul Burke's Eddy Malone in the original, Leary -- along with lawyer Ben Gazzara -- are two cast members who actually better their counterparts).

Back in 1968, Jewison told interviewers that "Crown" was a trifle, but worth watching for its visual pizazz. He was right, even though McTiernan's team sometimes act as if they were re-creating a great movie love story, full of timeless passion and relevance.

In most movies before 1968, McQueen's Crown would have been the suave villain flirting with the heroine but bested by the stalwart male detective. But instead, Crown himself becomes a real male fantasy character: rich beyond imagining, a charmed and charming inhabitant of the pleasure-oriented world of the American elite. But he's also a Golden Boy with a psychopathic bent, a reckless bravado that drives him to plan and execute daring robberies. Both times, Crown manages to baffle cops and insurance experts, until an outside expert is called in to investigate, whereupon she unmasks Crown and sets mutual sparks ablaze.

In the old "Crown," McQueen and Dunaway had delicious fun together -- especially in their famous wine glass scene. Here, though, we actually see the "Crown" couple nude and entwined, unobstructed by any "Eyes Wide Shut"-style digitized kibitzers; there's little sense of fun at all.